


the art of the compromise

by writing_way_too_much



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Flirting, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Healing, Love Languages, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Slow Burn, Some Mental Health Issues, and lowkey a decades-long depressive episode, i chose not to use archive warnings because there's some mentions of and allusions to dark stuff, so just read it! i promise it's good!, so just. proceed with caution ig?, the summary isn't great cause it was hard to pull lines to summarize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:35:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23900932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_way_too_much/pseuds/writing_way_too_much
Summary: Azriel finds other things to count:Breaths. Days. Minutes where he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning. Hours of sunlight. Paving stones. Feathers. Slits in Mor’s dresses and hangovers in Cassian’s eyes.(So much of his relationship with Cassian is characterized by maybes. Maybe Azriel has a crush that’s hundreds of years old. Maybe there’s tension. Maybe someday they’ll talk about it.)alt: Healing is a non-linear process. Everything takes time, especially for immortals.
Relationships: Azriel/Cassian (ACoTaR)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 133





	the art of the compromise

**Author's Note:**

> this is the longest fic i've ever written. i've been writing it, on and off, since november 2018, and it's finally (finally!!) done.
> 
> WARNINGS: there's a sort of depressive episode thing that azriel has, please be aware of that. the M rating is for some mild-ish sex scenes later.
> 
> title is from "the room where it happens" from hamilton. no i do not accept constructive criticism
> 
> i'm super proud of this fic, just as a piece of writing. lots of good lines. i had a hell of a time picking some for the summary
> 
> enjoy!!

Azriel doesn’t count the years anymore.

He stops after about the two hundred mark and tries to simply not count anything, but feels like the entire world is collapsing in on him. He needs order. Needs to be the one to put things in order. To count. To number off things and know exact quantities. So he finds other things to count:

Breaths. Days. Minutes where he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning. Hours of sunlight. Paving stones. Feathers. Slits in Mor’s dresses and hangovers in Cassian’s eyes.

Sometimes, he wakes up and can’t remember where he is. Sometimes, he falls asleep in the light and wakes up panicking in the dark. Sometimes, he’s thrown right back to that cellar.

He isn’t ever quite sure how he gets out. He suspects Cassian, because he’ll come back to himself wrapped in muscular arms with calloused hands rubbing his back. Cassian always leaves before Azriel can say anything, never admits to it. Azriel wishes he would. It would be easier to thank him that way.

The residents of Velaris throw a celebration once it’s been three hundred years since the War. Azriel doesn’t like that a hundred years passed without him counting them. It feels slightly like a rug has been pulled from under his feet, but he’s trying to get better at giving up control he’ll never have, so he goes.

He watches Cassian whirl Mor around on the dance floor, laughing. Nobody takes note of him. There’s a firm twinge in his chest. He doesn’t know who it’s supposed to be aimed at.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Amren asks, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Azriel turns to her, finding the sarcastic gleam in her eyes that means she’s joking.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replies steadily. He’s surprised at the smoothness of his own voice. He hasn’t spoken much in the past few decades.

Amren sees straight through him, just like she always does. Keeping a secret from her is impossible. “The Morrigan. You’re in love with her, right?”

Having had centuries to practice, Azriel has long since mastered the art of keeping his breathing or heart rate from betraying his inner panic. “Wherever did you get that idea?”

Amren raises one eyebrow. It took years of Mor holding back laughter for Amren to figure out the motion. “Need I remind you?”

No, she really doesn’t. Azriel remembers well enough the awful funk that had seized him when he’d learned that Mor had slept with Cassian. Everyone had assumed it was because he had feelings for Mor, because that was normal and typical and standard and safe. He let it be because it kept the pitying glances to just that. Azriel hadn’t even been able to sort through the mix of jealousy and fear that had had him in its grasp. To this day he’s still unsure.

He hesitates for too long, and Amren’s eyes gleam. They’re the worst part of her, sometimes, because the containment spell could not get them quite right. They look so unnatural when she gets excited or angry that it completely throws Azriel off balance.

“Her or him?” she asks simply.

Azriel manages a shrug before wreathing himself in shadows and slipping out to the nearest balcony.

(He doesn’t see the way Cassian’s eyes flick to him, and he’s so caught up in his own thoughts that he doesn’t notice Cassian standing just beyond the balcony for a while, failing to draw up the courage to say hi.)

Another fifty years pass. Azriel really only takes in about three of them, wanders around the townhouse and House of Wind in a haze. Flies over the mountains and lets all his early memories slam into him, again and again, doesn’t fight them back, until he can’t breathe. He feels like he’s dreaming most of the time, like everything’s planned out already and he’s just going through the motions. Feels like he’s underwater and everyone else is muted and far away.

Feels like nobody can break through to him.

Cassian’s glances are the most concerned, but Azriel doesn’t notice.

He’s slipping further and further away from being alive, knows it to be true, but can’t--he can’t--and then--then--

Starfall. The sky is full of the traveling spirits, trails of light. Azriel tilts his head back, watches them. He must be on a roof, he supposes. Wind is tousling his hair and pinking his cheeks. The sky above him is broad and free, a wide expanse of purple-black shot through with white light.

“Az?”

His neck is sore. He must have been holding this position for a while. He has to massage it a bit before he can look towards the owner of the voice. It’s Cassian, and dimly, in another life, he’s embarrassed by this.

“Hi,” Azriel says, except he doesn’t say anything at all. His throat is so dry. Cassian stoops down next to him.

“Let’s get you inside,” he says, trying to help Azriel stand. Azriel would be standing if he could--going inside sounds like a truly inspired idea, as he realizes that he’s shivering--but his legs won’t let him, and eventually Cassian just gives up and scoops Azriel up in his arms.

Nothing’s working the way it’s supposed to. Azriel’s cheeks are warm with embarrassment, but he can’t get control of a single shadow to mask his face. He can’t recall the last time he slept, and he’s so tired. Everything’s too hard, and he can’t--he _can’t--_

Years pass before things start to make sense again. Azriel doesn’t take in any of them. He must eat and sleep and such, because he’s still alive when the fuzziness clears, but he has absolutely no idea how long has passed. It’s like he’s sleepwalking, and it scares the shit out of everyone he cares about, everyone who cares about him.

Cassian watches with watery eyes as Azriel mumbles something about taking a nap, collapses on the couch. He’s still enough out of it that he doesn’t resist at all when Cassian gently rearranges his limbs and wings into a more comfortable position.

Hours later, Azriel wakes up and the world, for the most part, makes sense again.

“Hi,” Cassian says carefully.

Azriel blinks. Rubs at his eyes. Tries and fails to figure out what day, season, year it is. “Um.” His voice cracks, rusty with disuse, and he coughs so hard that he thinks he might die. “Hey.”

He isn’t expecting Cassian to heave a sort-of unnecessary sigh of relief and collapse next to him on the couch. While it’s a big couch, to make room for Illryian wings, it’s still a little awkward, their fronts mashed up against each other, Cassian’s weight pushing Azriel into the cushions. Azriel finds himself not really minding the proximity.

“Did I…” Shit, he has no idea how to phrase this. “Did I do something wrong? What happened?”

The last thing Azriel can fully recall is looking up at the spirits on Starfall. He has no idea if that was this year’s Starfall or one three hundred years ago. All of his memories are a blurred mismatch of colors. Fuck.

Cassian bites his lip. Azriel tries very hard not to stare. “Oh my god, Az, you were--you were fucking _gone_ for--for--for so long, and it took so long for one of us to even notice and something like fifty goddamn years for you to come back to yourself...I haven’t seen your eyes truly perceptive in I don’t even fucking know how long.”

Azriel isn’t a huge fan of that idea, but at least it explains it. “Um, I’m, I’m sorry. I don’t know what that was. It won’t happen again?”

Cassian closes his eyes, takes a forced deep breath. “I hope not.”

With Cassian’s eyes closed, Azriel steals a second to study his face, the lines in his forehead and around his mouth, the slight flutter of his eyelashes, the--shit, the recent scratch on his cheek, still an angry red. “Is that from a bar fight?”

Cassian blinks, looks confused. Lets out a tiny laugh. “Is what from what?”

“That,” Azriel says, lifting his hand that isn’t crushed under Cassian’s side to trace the scratch. “Were you fighting someone in a drunken haze?”

Cassian’s face clears, and he laughs again, a longer, better laugh. It burrows deep into Azriel’s chest. “How in the world did you guess that?”

Azriel forgets that he’s lying down and tries to shrug. It doesn’t work out very well. “I guessed that you were still the same person that I knew when I stopped trying to comprehend reality.”

If anyone else had said that, it would sound harsh. Hell, if Cassian had said that Azriel probably would have snapped at him. But it’s the truth, isn’t it? Reality didn’t lose its grip on Azriel. He stopped counting, let some control go. Let too much go and reality went with it.

Cassian’s eyes look teary, but not in an irreversible way.

“Yeah.” He swallows. Azriel follows the motion of his Adam’s apple with his eyes. “It was a few days ago. You were sort of clear again, but not enough to hold a conversation...I was tired of not knowing if you were ever going to come back. I just wanted to escape for a bit.”

Azriel drops his hand from where he’s absentmindedly rested it on Cassian’s cheek to push against Cassian’s chest, right over his heart. Feels the steady beat. Thinks, _how could I ever leave you behind?_ “I’ll always come back, if you’re still the same insufferable general you’ve always been.”

It’s touching on the edge of too honest, too raw, and Cassian thankfully lets it go. Smirks instead. “Does this mean that I get to start annoying you again?”

Mor informs both of them the next morning that there will be a four hundred year celebration of the Treaty and the end of the War in the coming week. The last thing Azriel is ready to do is go to a party, but Cassian’s eyes light up, and it at least lets him know how much time has passed. (Too much. Oh well. They’re all immortal. Time is their mistress.)

Rhys corners him when he gets out of his first conscious bath in several years. Maybe his first bath in several years, period. It’s not like he’d done much while wandering around, but he didn’t smell very nice. It’s a wonder that Cassian slept so close to him without complaint. “Can I speak with you?”

“Sure,” Azriel says, following Rhys into his room, perching on the edge of the desk. He figures he at least owes Rhys this much. “What is it?”

He isn’t expecting Rhys’s eyes to sparkle, full of mischief. “I haven’t said anything to Cassian, but word has it that the two of you fell asleep on the sofa last night.”

Azriel groans and runs a hand through his damp hair. He woke up groggy enough that it sent him into a spiral of panic and Cassian had to hold him tight until he worked his way out of it. “Shit, Rhys, I’ve been a walking zombie for fifty years. I just didn’t have the energy to make it up the stairs to my room.”

Rhys grins and hits Azriel’s shoulder good-naturedly. “If you’re sure that’s all it was.”

Azriel rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m positive. I only just remembered how reality works, Rhysand, let me be, okay?”

“Okay,” Rhys says easily, but he’s still smirking in a way that makes Azriel nervous as he heads back to his own room.

He spends the next few days trying to fix the damage fifty years of not taking care of himself has done. Briefly he considers a glamour, using magic, pulling the shadows out from where he can feel them again and blurring all of his lines just so. 

But then, no, he shouldn’t. As spymaster, he isn’t as well-known as the rest of the Inner Circle, but his weird absence for such a long time requires him to be fully there, he thinks.

That’s how Azriel ends up standing in front of his closet, feeling like a teenage Fae female before a first date.

He has absolutely no idea what to wear. Isn’t even sure if clothes he remembers from a hundred years ago are still there. Some dumb romantic part of him wants to look nice, but the rest of him is overwhelmingly practical and scarred, so he goes with simple black pants and a silky dark blue shirt.

Azriel looks at himself in the mirror. Studies the tiredness in his face, the heaviness in his shoulders, the vaguely unkempt state of his wings. Straightens the hem of his shirt and resists the urge to pull his sleeves down over his hands.

“That is not a party outfit,” Mor scolds when he gets to the celebration and has stood on the edges trying desperately to remember how to make small talk for a while. She’s in a cream dress with gold braid, and it looks stunning on her. “Where’s your color? Your pizzaz?”

“When have I ever had even an ounce of pizzaz?” Azriel asks dryly, letting Mor pull him onto the dance floor and whirl him around. “This is probably the most colorful shirt in my entire wardrobe.”

Mor makes a big show out of gasping. Azriel feels a laugh pushing at his lips. It’s a foreign feeling. “How dare you. We’ll have to get on fixing that.”

Her hands just feel like hands. Her laughter is as nice as anyone’s, but doesn’t make his heart race. She smells of nice perfume and champagne. She’s just Mor, and the only emotion Azriel’s feeling is light happiness at seeing things clearly again.

(So not her, then. He’ll have to sort through this information more later.)

Azriel isn’t even jealous when a gorgeous High Fae male steals Mor away during the next song, just lets her go and takes in the unbound joy on her face. Mor has always favored parties.

He gets himself a glass of champagne and sips it slowly, leaning against the wall. Amren comes and stands next to him and watches Mor and Cassian do some sort of jig together, the steps fast and complicated. Mor is absolutely kicking Cassian’s ass. “I’m glad you’re back,” is all Amren says.

“I’m glad I am too,” Azriel says, meaning it. When he turns to smile at her, she’s already gone, a door falling shut in her wake. He smiles for real then, and the action stretches unused muscles and nearly splits the dry skin of his lips, but it feels nice anyway.

Azriel and Amren end up being the only ones not absolutely shitfaced, and have to corral Mor, Rhys, and Cassian back to the townhouse to make sure they don’t hurt themselves. Cassian’s a loud, touchy drunk, and every time his arm falls around Azriel’s shoulders or he grabs Azriel’s hand, Azriel shivers. There’s no electric sparks or the like, just the very pleasant sensation of someone else’s skin on his and all of his nerve endings going, _oh, hello._

He’s so turned on when they get everyone settled that he can’t fall asleep. He sneaks out, feeling equal parts ridiculous and on fire, and flies up the river until the sky begins to lighten and his fingertips are numb, still in his fancy clothes.

When Azriel walks into the kitchen of the townhouse, hair a mess, half cloaked in shadows because he still feels explosive, Cassian’s there. He’s sitting on the counters that Rhys repeatedly tells them to get off of and drinking a glass of water, wincing in the sunlight.

“You could sleep in, you know,” Azriel says. His voice comes out oddly strangled, and he prays that Cassian’s too hungover to notice.

Cassian shrugs. “I tried. Woke up feeling like half my internal organs were melting and the other half were freezing, and couldn’t quite ignore it enough.”

Azriel snorts. “That’s what happens when you outdrink half the population of Velaris.”

Cassian sets the glass down and wrinkles his nose at the sound of the glass hitting the counter. “Is that what happened last night? I can’t hardly remember.”

“Four hundred year celebration and you acted like a complete ass,” Azriel says, enjoying this. “Lost a jig dance contest to Mor and whined about it, drowned your sorrows in heavy liquor, challenged anyone within sight to a drinking contest, nearly fell off the damn roof--”

Cassian’s laughing now, but only barely. He’s probably got a headache. “You’re shitting me.”

Azriel gives him his best deadpan stare. “You’ll never know.”

As he’s leaving to go bathe and change, Cassian whisper-shouts, “I’m onto you, Az! Using my blackouts to your advantage!” and it’s very easy to flip him off without looking back.

He needs to get a hobby, he realizes a few weeks later. Rhys has no urgent need for his spymaster in times of peace, and while Azriel is glad to be completely lucid again, it does get kind of boring just sitting around all day thinking. He doesn’t like being left alone with his thoughts.

It feels stupid, but he makes a list of possible hobbies to try out. Asks around the Inner Circle without being obvious to get ideas, thinks of his own.

Most of them are a complete bust within the first twenty minutes. He can’t paint or draw to save his life. People-watching just makes him look terrifying and creepy. Reading is too much like thinking. He’s never much liked made-up stories. The real world sucks enough.

Music, though.

That sticks.

He starts taking piano lessons from an older lady who doesn’t care about the scars on his hands or the shadows whispering in his ears and instead teaches him scales, basic exercises, simple pieces. Moves onto sonatinas and concertos in no time, because apparently Azriel is a freaking piano prodigy or some shit. His teacher applauds him when after only four months he learns a particularly difficult ballad-style piece.

Azriel likes playing pretty pieces. Likes pianissimo, andante, slow waltzes that feel like summertime. Likes how his scarred fingers can skate over the keys and make something worth listening to. Likes how this is something he can create.

The music seems to draw Cassian to him. Often, Azriel will sit down to play for an hour or so and Cassian will wander in, hands full of battle plans or cleaning weapons or just to listen. He never sits on the piano bench, but he’ll hover right behind Azriel, just enough to feel the warmth, and Azriel has to take deep breaths and force his hands to not stutter on the keys.

Another hobby he picks up is training. He’s plenty good with a sword, knife, anything with an edge, but he gets bored and restless, so it’s a good outlet for his energy. Rhys is too powerful and too afraid to hurt him, which, okay, Azriel understands. But then training becomes both a hobby and a self-inflicted torture, because…

Because Cassian’s the only one willing to spar with him as much as he likes, and sparring is not an activity that takes personal space into account.

It’s a sort of game, testing each other. Seeing how far they’re willing to take this. Azriel stares at the sweat glistening on Cassian’s bare back. Cassian presses his sword against Azriel’s throat, face closer than it should be. They wrestle sometimes, skin on skin on hands on thighs until one or both of them is so hard they can’t hide it anymore and they have to call it quits.

Azriel knows Cassian notices how turned on he gets by roughhousing, because he notices it right back. Tells himself over and over that it’s just the close proximity, that Cassian would react the same way if it was anyone else. He knows he wouldn’t. Doesn’t even try to lie to himself about that.

But there’s also lighter things, purer. Like when Azriel makes breakfast and Cassian smiles at him soft in the morning light, or when Cassian buys sheet music and leaves it on Azriel’s bed; playful banter, conversations that Azriel doesn’t have to second-guess; things that Azriel would like to think that normal friends do for each other, but he’s never been much of a judge of that.

He’s not counting the years any more, but he’s still keeping track. He likes knowing how long he’s been alive, likes keeping track of things in a non-obsessive way. Oh, Azriel still counts things, but only objects now. Objects and times he gets hard thinking about Cassian pinning him down on the wrestling mat.

The closest it ever gets to coming to a head is one night when they’re both just this side of drunk, enough to lower their inhibitions and make them think that a drunken wrestling match in the wee hours of the morning is a fantastic idea.

“I’ve won the last three times,” Cassian says as he’s getting the mat ready. Azriel snorts.

“That’s just cause you’ve got an unfair amount of muscles,” he says without meaning to.

Cassian smirks. “What’s that about my muscles?”

He flexes his biceps, and Azriel’s mouth goes dry. There’s not really a good way to play this one off, so he rolls with it, putting his own arm up next to Cassian’s. He’s reasonably strong, but he only ever wins fights because he’s smaller and more agile. “Look. Unfair advantage.”

Cassian laughs, and then he grabs Azriel by the shoulders and bodily throws him to the ground.

“Oh, you are in for it,” Azriel says, and maybe he growls a little bit, and maybe he watches Cassian’s pupils dilate.

They wrestle for an indeterminable amount of time. For the first time in a long while, Azriel isn’t counting anything, fully in the moment. All he can think about and focus on is Cassian, Cassian and his hands, his arms, the little unconscious noises he’s making. Shit, he’s really fucking turned on by this.

But also, they’re both drunk, and eventually they collapse to the floor. Nobody wins. Azriel stares up at the ceiling, all of his limbs feeling like they’re made of stone. He couldn’t have any kind of sex with Cassian right now, even if Cassian wanted to. He’s too damn tired.

“You haven’t been sleeping well, have you?”

When Azriel looks over at him, Cassian’s propped up on one arm, pupils still dilated, but looking at him with something almost like fondness in his gaze. It catches Azriel completely off guard.

“I’ve never slept well, Cassian, c’mon, do you even know me?”

Cassian chuckles dryly at that. “Hate that for you.”

Azriel thinks that maybe an unspoken _wish I could fix that for you_ hangs in the air between them. Maybe.

(So much of his relationship with Cassian is characterized by maybes. Maybe Azriel has a crush that’s hundreds of years old. Maybe there’s tension. Maybe someday they’ll talk about it.)

He’s too drunk to remember exactly how he gets to bed, but he’d like to think that Cassian carried him there. He’s got a vague sense of being gathered up in strong tan arms, careful of his wings, and then being deposited unceremoniously on his bed. Well, he wakes up with a crick in his neck because he sleeps like a literal rock, doesn’t move the entire night. It kind of fits with his hangover and blurry memory.

It takes him a few weeks, but he’s building up the courage to talk to Cassian about this thing that’s building between them, ask if he feels it too, and then there is a genuine and terrifying threat on the horizon, and Azriel can’t do anything but watch in stunned horror as--

As--

Everything falls apart with Amarantha.

Cassian’s brow is furrowed with battle-ready concentration now. Azriel spends more time away from Velaris than in it, attempting to gather information. Mostly failing. Rhys is gone, under the mountain. They don’t even know if he’s still alive. Won’t fully let themselves consider the possibility. Mor won’t even speak half the time, too consumed with worry. Amren disappears for stretches at a time and nobody knows where she goes.

Rhys comes back, tells tales of a human girl who won, who was made High Fae, who broke the curse. Who he made a deal with. Mor and Azriel exchange looks when Rhys talks about her for too long.

But everything is not yet solved, not even when Rhys brings Feyre to the Night Court and she loses the look of emptiness that Azriel remembers all too well. There is still a threat, still a disaster, still Hybern. Then a betrayal. Scheming. Spying and torturing and war plotting.

It blurs together again, but differently now. Azriel is so busy that days pass in a flash, and he sleeps hard. They have to win. They have to be smarter, more powerful. Everything’s going to hell and they may very well all die.

He hasn’t trained or wrestled or tried to flirt with Cassian in months. He misses it.

Azriel wants to go back to before, wants to return to skirting around Cassian, wants to return to times of peace and calloused fingers and the promise of someday talking it all out, the promise of _more._ He wants everything to slow back down. Things still make sense. The world is still clear. But time passes by in leaps and gallops, and Azriel feels like he can’t breathe.

He counts different things now:

Threats. Missions. Hours spent in the air. Spells. Kisses between Feyre and Rhys. Shadows returning to Mor’s eyes. Time that they have. Time that’s always running out.

He hasn’t played the piano since before Amarantha.

It’s outrageously selfish of him, but he can’t help but be pissed off that all of this shit had to happen now. Right when, maybe, he was about to discover what Cassian’s collarbones felt like under his tongue. Fuck.

When they finally do win, it comes at the cost of Rhys almost dying, Azriel giving up Truth-Teller, Cassian sending too-long glances in a direction that isn’t Azriel’s, Nesta and Elain losing everything they’ve ever known and adjusting poorly. It’s a victory, but barely.

There’s still the matter of everything happening in the Illyrian camps, still the matter of rebuilding and connecting more with the rest of the Courts. Still so many things to do, traumas to deal with, people to help. But it’s all far less pressing. They won. They won, and everything in the world relaxes a little.

Azriel’s grown unused to peace again. Damn.

He wakes up late one morning and lies there in the sunlight. Realizes that he doesn’t have anything to do that day, for once. There’s a smile to be had somewhere in his features. His lips have forgotten the motion again.

He doesn’t cry, because he isn’t sad, and maybe because he’s also forgotten how to be vulnerable. Even if that vulnerability is just to himself in the privacy of his sun-soaked room. But there’s the urge to cry, buried somewhere deep underneath all of his scars.

“Vulnerability is difficult to learn,” the wise man who sits under trees and braids copper into ornaments tells him. Azriel has taken to sitting under trees with him. He probably drives off business, what with his tattoos and wings and haunted eyes, but the man likes conversation and never even hints at wanting him to leave.

“I don’t think I can be vulnerable anymore,” Azriel says honestly. He runs his finger along the edges of a star-shaped ornament.

The wise man smiles at him. “You were vulnerable with me just now.”

Azriel thinks that over for a while, watching the passerby and the wind in the grass. “How...how do I learn?”

“You have to let people in.” The wise man places the star in Azriel’s hand. “It’s okay if it’s little by little. Even just letting someone stand near you is progress. But my advice, for you, is to get a pet. A small animal that relies on you for safety is a good thing to confide in, since it won’t judge you. And you can figure out how to voice your feelings.”

There are two problems with that. One, Azriel already has people he trusts, and he still doesn’t know how to let them in.

And two: generally speaking, High Fae don’t have pets. Being immortal does not lend itself well to befriending creatures whose lifespan is the blink of an eye. But Azriel is working on trying to break down his walls, really does want to be able to put a voice to the things rattling around inside of him, so he goes to an animal shelter in the still-rebuilding Velaris.

Well, he tries to. He walks straight past it for a week until he can actually make himself go inside.

“Hello!” a chipper voice calls from the back. “I’ll be just a moment, feeding some birds!”

Azriel does not want any birds. He stays where he is, one step inside the door, and eyes the animal nearest him with no small degree of suspicion. The animal, which he is quite embarrassed to admit he can’t identify, eyes him right back.

A young fae girl bustles out from the back of the shop. She’s got swinging braids and a bright dress, and looks like she belongs in the world of the living. She comes to a complete halt when she sees Azriel, and clearly recognizes him.

“...sir,” she says. “Um. Hello. How--how can I help you today?”

Azriel clears his throat. He has never been good at making conversation with someone he hasn’t already known for hundreds of years. “I was wondering about adopting a pet?”

The girl tilts her head. Hesitation wavers in her face, but when she opens her mouth, none of it comes out. “Sure. What kind of animal are you thinking? We have your standard rescue cats and dogs, but we also have a large selection of birds and reptiles…”

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Azriel says honestly. “I’m...someone recommended--”

How open should he be about this? He hasn’t even told Rhys and Cassian about this. “I’m--wait, sorry, I’m Azriel, what’s your name?”

“Stella. If you have no clue where to start, why don’t you play with some of these animals and then we can see which ones you like best?”

It doesn’t go very well at first. Stella can’t get him to go within five feet of the snakes, even the tiny ones. She puts one around her finger and starts to hold it out towards him and Azriel barely stops himself from drawing a knife on her. 

“They’re...quite...slithery,” he says through gritted teeth. Stella sighs through her nose and puts the snake back in its tank, closing the lid firmly. Azriel takes another cautious step back, just in case. He killed a very large snake-like entity once, and even this little one’s forked tongue flicking out is an unpleasant reminder.

“What about something with less scales?” Stella suggests. “What are your thoughts on birds?”

Azriel shrugs.

His thoughts on birds turn out to not matter, because all of the birds squawk and flutter away from him. Stella blinks at him from where all the birds in the shop have settled onto her as if she’s a tree. Azriel would laugh if he wasn’t so despondent. “Maybe not.”

The dogs have large amounts of energy. Azriel is tired just looking at them. There’s an older dog that seems like it might be a good fit, but then it tries to lick Azriel’s chin and he almost slices it into pieces. Stella snatches the dog away before it can get hurt and narrows her eyes at Azriel in a reprimanding way that reminds him of Mor. They would probably get along well.

Azriel is beginning to think that he’ll end up with a fish, just swimming around in a little plastic tank, too stupid to be aware of its surroundings. It’s a depressing thought. He should probably just leave, go back to the townhouse or maybe fly up to the House of Wind to sulk. He’s already hit several things in the shop with his wings and Stella keeps sending him dubious glances. _This was a mistake,_ his entire body is telling him.

Something paws at his leg.

Azriel peers down to find a cat who is either extremely brave or extremely dumb batting at the hems of his pants. The cat seems to be oblivious to the fact that Azriel could eviscerate it in a mere second. It peers right back up at him. “Mrow.”

“Oh, you don’t want that cat,” Stella says, with a very fake laugh. “She’s nothing but trouble. Can’t stay in her cage, doesn’t listen to calls, won’t eat half the time--”

“How much?” Azriel asks, still locked in a staring contest with the cat. “And what’s her name?”

He goes back to the townhouse loaded down with a cat bed, scratching post, bag of food, litter box, and one slightly irate cat in a carrier. She meows the entire way back to the townhouse. Azriel gets more than a few strange looks.

Nobody is home, and he trudges up the stairs to his room, closing the door and letting the cat out to explore. Her name is Maia, and she immediately sharpens her claws on his bedpost. Azriel stares for a moment at her insolence, and then spritzes her in the face with a spray bottle. 

It doesn’t take long for Maia to sniff everything in his bedroom. Azriel doesn’t have many possessions. He spends a decent hour wrangling with packaging materials and then getting her things set up. She makes herself comfortable on the foot of his bed and goes to sleep.

Maia stays reasonably low-key for a few weeks. Rhys and Feyre are way too caught up in each other to notice a relatively tiny cat sniffing everything within reach. Mor is out most of the time helping to rebuild. Cassian...Cassian hasn’t really been talking to Azriel much, too busy trying to woo Nesta. Which hurts, but if Azriel doesn’t focus on it, it feels more like an old bruise than a still-hot burn. Elain isn’t with it enough to notice a lion’s moved in, let alone a housecat.

They’re having dinner one night, all of them, up at the House of Wind. Azriel left food in Maia’s dish and made sure her litter box was clean and shut her in his room, to minimize her claw damage. Feyre is nearly falling off of her chair with how close she’s trying to sit to Rhys. Mor is talking gently to Elain, who is very focused on buttering a series of rolls and not actually eating any of them. Cassian and Nesta are arguing, but in a way that seems more like foreplay.

Azriel wishes desperately and horribly for a moment that Feyre had never come across Tamlin’s sentry in the woods. Because then none of the Archeron sisters would be in his life, and Rhys would still talk to him about non-governmental things, and Cassian wouldn’t be eschewing all sense of subtlety to try and fuck Nesta. His common sense catches up a moment later, reminds him of Elain’s gentle garden and how wonderfully in love Rhys, one of his favorite people in the world, is. Reminds him that he had five hundred years to do something about his feelings for Cassian.

He has a single glass of wine and leaves before the rest of the group, citing a headache. He feels Cassian’s gaze land on him. And oh, it still burns, that delicious feeling of being catalogued for a good reason. It burns worse now because Azriel knows he’s lost his chance.

Azriel leaps off a ledge of the House of Wind and lets himself free-fall for a dizzying few seconds before spreading his wings and flying as fast as he can back to the townhouse.

Maia meows indignantly at him when he opens the door to his room. He refills her bowl with dry food and collapses onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling and...shit, he didn’t know that he was still capable of crying.

A pressure on his chest startles him. He lifts his head to see Maia (jury’s still out on whether she’s brave or dumb) settling down onto the soft fabric of his shirt. She turns around a few times, makes herself comfortable, and starts purring.

Azriel falls asleep like that, with his cat purring on his chest and tears drying on his face. He promises himself that he’ll at least try to talk about his feelings out loud to Maia in the morning.

She’s moved to the top of his wardrobe by the time he wakes up. She seems mystified as to how she’s gotten there, and is meowing loudly to get his attention. Azriel is more than a little tempted to just leave her and let her jump down, but he’s growing to have a serious soft spot for the cat, so he makes himself stand up.

“Hi,” he says, resting his chin on top of the wardrobe right in front of Maia’s face. She touches her nose briefly to his and then yawns in his face.

Azriel clears his throat. “So, I’ve been thinking,” he says. Keeps his voice low. He doesn’t know who else is awake, and he doesn’t want anyone else hearing this. “I’m...I like Cassian. I’ve liked him for a while. And I thought that maybe he liked me too. But then there was the war with Hybern, and then Nesta Archeron showed up, and now I think he’s…”

Maia meows at him as she realizes that he’s not going to lift her off of the wardrobe anytime soon. Azriel laughs a little at that. He’s surprised to find tears in his eyes.

“...he likes Nesta,” Azriel says. “And they would be a good fit, I think. She’s not anywhere as broken as I am. But I can’t even really be mad. I had hundreds of years to make a move.”

Maia bats his nose and he recoils, surprised. “You are either very brave or very dumb,” he tells her for what might be the seventh or eighth time.

Azriel does end up lifting Maia down from the wardrobe. He refills her food bowl and gets her fresh water and heads down to breakfast, closing his door. He could swear he hears it snick shut, but a very inquisitive little cat nose sticks out of it a few minutes later, and Maia sets off exploring.

Nesta is in the kitchen, because the fates have it out for him. She’s sprinkling cinnamon over a bowl of oatmeal. This is the first time Azriel’s seen her with her hair down, both physically and metaphorically. He’s never seen her in a state of anything approaching relaxation before.

“Good morning,” he says, because he may have been raised partly in a cellar but he still has goddamn manners.

She looks up. Her mouth is kiss-bitten and Azriel’s spymaster eyes catch on the red spot on her neck.

His whole world drops out from beneath him.

“Good morning,” Nesta says after a tense few seconds. “I…”

“It’s fine,” Azriel says. It feels like he’s barely managing to cling upright, and he has to fight the urge to grab onto the counter. She’s standing right in front of where they keep the eggs. “I just need, uh, a few eggs.”

“Oh, sorry,” Nesta says, none of her usual brusqueness in place. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

She heads to the formal dining room and takes a seat in the middle of the table. Azriel turns away so she won’t see him taking a deep breath and then starts making omelets.

He makes two for himself and hesitates before pouring a third. He desperately wants it to be for Cassian. He wants Cassian to come down the stairs, hungover and complaining about it, and muss his hair, and sit on the counter, and steal bites of the food that Azriel’s already made. He wants it so badly that he can feel it, his heart cracking in his chest, spilling through his ribcage. Because, fuck, he’s in deeper than he thought. Has been for a while.

The third omelet turns out a little sloppy, but only because his hands are shaking.

Azriel leaves the omelet on the counter and doesn’t bother cleaning up. He doesn’t want Nesta to see him fall apart.

He doesn’t even take a bite of his food, just sets the plate down on his desk and then sinks to the floor, staring at his closed bedroom door. There aren’t tears, just a sort of disappointment slamming itself into his chest, over and over.

It takes a few minutes for things to register again, but once he blinks himself back to clarity, he realizes that something is wrong. The omelets on his desk would be incredibly interesting to a cat as curious as his, and he hasn’t seen her yet.

Azriel nearly tears his room apart looking for Maia, but she isn’t behind or under any of the furniture. His omelets are getting cold on his desk and he’s lost his cat. Great. Shit.

“Maia?” Azriel calls softly, stepping out onto the landing. He jingles a little toy that he bought the other day that she spent a full twenty minutes batting at. “Maia? Kitty?”

“Oh, you looking for that cat?” says an unfamiliar voice.

Azriel looks up at a fae male he’s never seen before, who has light hair and light eyes and may or may not actually be pulsing with light. “...I am,” he says slowly. “And you are?”

“Guest of Nesta’s,” the male says. He’s not wearing many clothes. “Nice to meet you.”

Azriel thinks he might start hovering a few feet off the ground if he isn’t careful. “Uh. You too. Where--where was the cat?”

The male nods his head up the stairs. “Booking it up there.”

_Shit_. “Thanks.”

The male gives him a friendly nod and continues downstairs. Azriel stands there, processing, for a good few seconds.

Nesta didn’t sleep with Cassian. It was someone else. Cassian is--Cassian is--

Cassian is playing with his goddamn cat.

“Maia!” Azriel says, relieved, when he gets to the next landing on the stairs. It’s outside Cassian’s room. Cassian himself is sitting on the floor, holding out his hand for Maia to sniff. He’s looking at the cat with such an inordinate amount of fondness that Azriel has to grab onto the handrail for support.

Cassian looks up. “Az, do you know where this small furry creature came from?”

“Yeah.” Azriel sits down right next to Cassian before he can think too hard about it. Maia has decided that Cassian’s okay and is letting him run his fingers over her ears. “Her name is Maia, and she’s a cat. I, uh, I adopted her from an animal shelter?”

His voice rises at the end of his sentence. He’s honestly still amazed at himself.

Maia butts her head more insistently at Cassian’s hand and puts one of her front paws on his leg. Cassian looks at Azriel, his face soft and open.

“Az...you got a pet?”

“I suppose,” Azriel mumbles. “I didn’t really know how to tell you guys.”

Cassian laughs a little, a choked-off sound, and then he cups Azriel’s jaw with the hand not currently petting Maia and kisses him.

Azriel is not expecting it, to say the least. He barely kisses back. But Cassian draws away all too soon, and that absolutely will not stand. So Azriel grabs blindly at Cassian’s torso and kisses him back. Presses him into the wall a little with the force of it. Cassian matches him, gets a hand in Azriel’s hair, presses right back.

A very impatient meow interrupts them.

Azriel looks down to see Maia pawing indignantly at his knee. “Yeah, hi, honey, sorry, I just, I just, I just--”

Cassian is smiling at him, the dopey loving smile that Azriel’s often seen pointed between Rhys and Feyre. It’s directed at him. Him. Azriel. From Cassian.

“--if I’d known all it would take for you to kiss me was getting a cat, I would have done it years ago,” Azriel finishes.

Cassian kisses him again, just for the hell of it. “It’s not just that.”

“Me _ow_ ,” Maia says loudly.

“I.” Azriel kisses Cassian’s cheek, getting just the corner of his mouth. Because he can. Because he’s allowed. “I think we need to have a conversation, maybe.”

“Maybe.” Cassian looks down at Maia with a newly expanded amount of fondness in his eyes. “Should probably get the cat situated first.”

Azriel laughs, the kind of ridiculous lovesick giggle he never thought he’d give. “Yeah. Yeah. And then I’m gonna make you breakfast, and you’re gonna sit close to me the entire time.”

“And then,” Cassian says, pitching his voice lower, “we’re gonna come up to my room, and I’m gonna finally take your clothes off.”

“How long have you wanted this?” Azriel can’t help himself from asking.

“Since…” Cassian’s shoulders rise and fall. “Since forever. Since I realized what fucking was, and then once I realized what love was.”

Azriel’s going to keep this moment as a very treasured memory. “I love you too.”

He stands with no small amount of regret. Cassian is on his feet the fastest Azriel’s ever seen him, just so he can hold him again. It makes something similar to champagne bubble up in Azriel’s chest.

Maia is deposited in Azriel’s room. She goes over immediately to investigate the abandoned omelets on his desk, and Azriel makes sure that the door is firmly shut before turning. Cassian’s had a hand on his waist or shoulder this whole time, and when he turns, Cassian is right up in his personal space.

“Hey.” Cassian grins down at him.

Azriel kisses him first, but then he’s the one being pressed against the wall, Cassian’s hands on either side of his neck. It’s a damn good kiss. They break it only when Cassian’s stomach gives a loud rumble.

“Sorry,” Cassian says sheepishly. Azriel buries his face in Cassian’s shoulder, laughing.

“God, I love you so much,” he says into the fabric of Cassian’s shirt.

Cassian kisses the top of his head. “I love you so much too.”

In the kitchen, Nesta and her possibly-glowing boyfriend?boytoy?one-night-stand? are bickering over glasses of orange juice. They barely take note of Azriel and Cassian, who are still keeping incredibly close to each other. Personally, Azriel never wants to let go of Cassian again.

He makes a breakfast scramble, with enough for all of the people currently in the townhouse. Cassian dances his fingers along Azriel’s shoulder, his waist, just slightly under the hem of his shirt. Azriel has to stare really hard at the bacon sizzling on the stove to not get hard right then and there.

“You’re a fucking tease, you know that?” he says affectionately. Breathes it right into Cassian’s ear.

“You’ve been a fucking tease for a hundred years,” Cassian says back. Just as affectionately, but with something heavier underneath the surface. He kisses the skin right under Azriel’s ear after he says it and then moves away.

Azriel swallows his gasp and mixes the bacon into the scrambled eggs.

Feyre and Rhys come downstairs, drawn by the smell of Azriel’s cooking. They sit next to each other in dining table chairs like regular people. Cassian moves two chairs as close together as possible and sits half in Azriel’s lap. Not that Azriel’s complaining. It’s just that every time Cassian moves, he can feel it.

“Thanks for breakfast, Az,” Rhys says after about three minutes of a very weird silence wherein Nesta and her male escort?fuckbuddy?hookup? make themselves scarce and Feyre keeps cutting side glances at how close Cassian and Azriel are.

“You’re welcome,” Azriel replies. He likes cooking for people. “Sorry it isn’t anything fancier.”

“S’fine,” Rhys says, dipping his head back to the table.

Azriel doesn’t have to see his face to know that Cassian’s grinning, delighted at how odd the atmosphere is in the room right now. He’s just waiting for someone to ask, can see the questions in Feyre’s face. Three...two...one…

“Are you guys a thing now?” Feyre bursts out. “Is this a new development, or have I just not noticed?”

“Thing now,” Cassian answers easily. “Quite new. Thank you for noticing.”

Azriel mouths a silent apology at Feyre from across the table.

Rhys snorts. “Took you two long enough. Man, I called Az out on his crush over a hundred years ago and it _still_ took you this long?”

“I am very good at repressing my emotions,” Azriel says primly. Cassian laughs. Azriel can feel it reverberating through his chest.

Feyre gives them an odd look. “Well, uh, I’m happy for you two. You’ll be good for each other.”

“Thank you,” Cassian says sincerely. “I hope so.”

“I didn’t pine after you for centuries for you to say ‘hope so,’” Azriel teases.

“Centuries? Damn, babe, that’s embarrassing.” Cassian turns so that Azriel can see his face. “Never thought of making a move?”

“Shut your damn mouth,” Azriel says, unable to contain his laughter. “Not like you were any better.”

Feyre and Rhys exchange a look. Feyre grabs her plate and stands up.

“We’re gonna let you two flirt in peace,” she says, just about pushing Rhys out of the dining room. “Don’t get too rowdy.”

“Oh, I plan to get far more rowdy than this,” Cassian says in Azriel’s ear, in something approaching a growl. Azriel has spent the entire breakfast in an uncomfortable state of kinda-mostly turned on, and that statement does not help his current matters. Not to mention that Cassian can feel everything since he’s sitting on Azriel’s lap and Azriel isn’t wearing very thick pants.

“Please don’t fuck on my nice dining room table!” Rhys shouts from the stairs. Feyre shushes him loudly. Azriel collapses into Cassian’s chest, laughing. Cassian lifts his chin up with a finger, eyes dark.

“You want to?” he asks. It’s the single hottest thing Azriel’s ever heard.

He does want to, painfully so. But he does also want to respect the fact that they live in a shared home with multiple other people, and also Elain and Mor haven’t come down for breakfast yet and he really doesn’t want to get walked in on.

“We shouldn’t,” Azriel says regretfully.

“Fine, then, I shall just take you to bed.”

Azriel goes a little dizzy with the force of how quickly blood leaves his brain.

Cassian carries him up the stairs, passing Azriel’s room. Azriel thinks he can hear Maia meow at the sound of footsteps, but then they’re halfway up to the next landing and Azriel starts trailing his fingers over the skin of Cassian’s jaw just to hear his breath hitch.

“That’s quite rude of you to do when I’m so graciously carrying you to bed,” Cassian says. His voice sounds strangled.

Azriel smiles at him. He knows he’s giving himself away with how fond it is, but he can’t find it in himself to care. “Wanted to do that for a long time.”

“Oh yeah?”

Azriel slides his hands down to trace the edges of Cassian’s tattoos. “Years. Centuries. Always.”

Cassian pauses, very close to his bedroom door, and twists his head down to kiss Azriel. It’s an awkward angle, and the kiss doesn’t last long, but Azriel can feel Cassian’s desperation. “God,” he whispers when Cassian pulls away.

It only occurs to him a moment later that--shit, his hands. His scars. He’s grown so used to looking at them that he doesn’t really notice them anymore, but he can see the Archeron sisters looking at them with unreadable faces sometimes. He doesn’t think that Cassian would be bothered. Suddenly he’s not so sure.

“Cassian, do my--do my hands bother you?”

They’re in the middle of Cassian’s room and his arms have got to be tired with how long he’s been holding Azriel. He looks down at him, nothing bad whatsoever in his expression. “They never could.”

And then he basically _throws_ Azriel down onto his bed, which, okay, is _really, really hot._ Azriel flashes back briefly to every single time they’ve wrestled and gotten hard from it. Oh, this is about to be excellent.

It is excellent, hands and mouths on skin, sweat beading on Cassian’s forehead, clothes torn off and tossed to the floor. Azriel finally gets his mouth on Cassian’s collarbones, leaves kisses all over his neck and jawline, trails them down past Cassian’s waistband. Cassian twists his fingers in Azriel’s hair, touches every single inch of his skin, like he’s mapping it, and everywhere he touches feels warm and electric and alive.

They don’t come at the same time, because sex is never perfect, but when Cassian collapses next to Azriel, completely disheveled and undressed, grinning like he’s never been happier, it’s damn near close enough.

Time passes, but nicely. The city of Velaris rebuilds. Rhys makes some headway in reforming the Illyrian camps. Mor and Nesta start hanging out, oddly enough, but they’re good for each other, keep the alcohol intake down and the quality of partners from getting too shady. Elain spends a lot of time gardening, both in the townhouse and all over Velaris, and Feyre helps her with it.

Cassian and Azriel are--they’re not dating, really, because that seems too small a word for immortals and the scope of their feelings for each other. But they’re sure as hell not seeing anyone else. Cassian tells Azriel he loves him all the time, drops it into casual conversation so much that it seems like he’s showing off. Azriel says it back each time and also tells Cassian he loves him in other ways, through hugs and meals and playing him piano pieces.

Maia makes her presence known not long after Cassian discovers her existence.Rhys shouts that something’s clawed up the leg of a chair in his study and Azriel apologizes twelve times. It turns out not to matter, because the second Rhys sees Maia, his entire face softens and he starts scratching behind her ears.

“She’s sweet,” Mor says when Maia wraps her tail around her ankles. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a cat person, Az.”

Azriel shrugs and clicks his tongue. Maia scampers over and he picks her up, kissing the top of her head. “Good kitty,” he mumbles. “Guess we’re all full of surprises.”

Nobody is opposed to the tiny cat living in their midst, and life keeps going on.

Azriel finds, again, a different set of things to count:

Smiles that Cassian gives him. Birds that Elain talks to. Complicated pieces of music that he knows. Times Rhys gets frustrated with the Illyrians. Keys on the piano. Bricks in piles on the streets. Gifts from Cassian. Small furry creatures that Maia hunts up in the mountains around the House of Wind.

Every time that he and Cassian spar, now, it turns into sex. Neither of them is complaining.

(“You wanna-- _fuck,_ Az,” Cassian gasps out. Azriel grins down at him from where he’s got Cassian pinned beneath him.

“That is exactly what I wanna do,” he says, voice low. Cassian kisses him so hard it almost hurts, but in a good way.

They almost fuck right there on the training mat, get pretty close, but then Azriel remembers that technically they’re in a public space and winnows them to his bedroom. Cassian flips them over and grinds his hips down onto Azriel’s and Azriel moans. Their shirts are long gone.

Azriel just feels so _present,_ so _there._ So completely in the moment.

He loves every single second of it.)

It’s not perfect. Azriel still has his bad days. Cassian gets pissy for seemingly no reason and spends hours flying in the mountains. Something dark and rotting attacks a shop in Velaris and they all winnow there faster than they’d thought possible, save a young girl from death but not from terrible memories. Azriel stays out of Court politics, but sometimes he’ll listen to Rhys complain about it and wince in sympathy.

But life is never perfect, not really, and Azriel finds that he’s increasingly okay with that. He has his cat and his piano and his Cassian and his friends. He has all of his memories and all of his feelings. He’s clear and vibrant and so, so alive.

Cassian takes him on a date. Azriel only feels a little ridiculous about it. They get dressed up, with no small amount of fashion advice from Mor, and go to a medium-fancy restaurant. Azriel gets nervous when the waiter comes over and they’re so obviously on a date, two males, but the waiter doesn’t even bat an eye and brings them extra bread when Cassian asks nicely.

They hold hands across the table. The food is good, really good. “We should recommend this place to Feyre and Rhys,” Cassian says with his mouth full, and Azriel laughs a little but motions at his mouth with one hand. “Oh, sorry, babe,” Cassian says, swallowing. “Forgot this was to be a proper date and all. Table manners and shit.”

“Don’t swear,” Azriel says, giggling. He’s actually giggling. This is what being in love is doing to him. He’s gone sappy. “We’re in a reasonably upright establishment.”

Cassian throws a roll at him.

Azriel takes Cassian to meet the wise craftsman. The man smiles at Azriel when he tells him about Maia. Cassian spends nearly ten minutes looking at all of the copper ornaments in extensive detail, and buys a dozen of them. They spend a very peaceful afternoon underneath a wide-leafed tree, listening to the man tell stories they’ve never heard.

Maia hops up on the bench beside Azriel when he goes to play the piano. Sometimes Cassian comes and scoops her off and sits next to Azriel instead. He’ll snake an arm around Azriel’s waist or toss one of his legs over one of Azriel’s and do his best to distract him. Most of the time it works.

“I’m playing this for you, dumbass,” Azriel says in a huff one day. He’s stumbling through a waltz. Cassian has one hand under the hem of his shirt and his lips are on Azriel’s neck. “I’m--serenading you.”

“I can think of some other ways for you to use your hands for me,” Cassian says right into Azriel’s ear.

Azriel writes the afternoon off as a loss, musically, and shifts to sit fully in Cassian’s lap, kisses him deeply. Cassian’s hands are under his shirt and pulling Azriel close to him. God, he still can’t believe, after all these weeks of doing it, how good making out feels.

“Get a room!” Mor yelps, happening to walk past.

“We’re in a room,” Cassian says. “Perfectly good room.”

“Other people go in here, you know,” she says.

Azriel almost moans out loud with what Cassian’s doing to his neck. “Pretty sure I’m--I’m the only one who uses the piano,” he gets out.

“Other people live in the House of Wind,” she amends. “And sometimes Rhys holds fancy parties here, and guests socialize in this room.”

“We’ll clean it.” Cassian turns away from Azriel to look Mor in the face. “Shut the door, will you?”

“I can’t believe you guys are gonna fuck on a piano bench.” Mor shakes her head but closes the door. “Be safe!” she shouts before walking away.

“Rude of her to interrupt,” Cassian says.

Azriel kisses him again before he can say another word. It’s--they don’t kiss desperately, that’s not the right word for it. There’s no underlying sense of urgency. There’s just a powerful _want,_ a deep sense of necessity, but not in a rushed way.

(Sometimes they do kiss slowly. Sometimes they wake up late together and spend a long while just kissing each other softly in the sunlight. But mostly, they have several centuries’ worth of pent-up sexual tension. Azriel shivers at the thought that technically they’ve got forever in front of them.)

Cassian closes the lid of the piano so they don’t make a mess of the keys and Azriel is protective enough of the instrument to move the bench a few feet away. And then Cassian fucks him on it, and it’s good. It’s always good.

“I’m always good when I’m with you,” Azriel says after, slightly nonsensically. They’ve cleaned up and relocated to a large couch. Azriel’s head is on Cassian’s chest and Cassian is running his fingers through Azriel’s hair.

“I would want nothing less,” Cassian says. Azriel doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s smiling. He can hear it in Cassian’s voice.

He spent so long in the dark (longest worst years of his life, shadows shadows shadows that whispered and rustled around him till he learned to speak their language) and then so long aching, pining, forcing himself away from a bad thing. Not to mention the years of his episode-things, whatever they were, lapsed out of reality. And sometimes Azriel has days where he wakes up and can barely even open his eyes.

But he has so many good things in his life. They outweigh the negatives, outweigh the centuries of not talking and hating himself and letting himself be hidden by shadows. Because Azriel has Cassian, and his other friends, and his cat. He has the wafting melody of songs on the piano and the vibrations of Maia’s purrs.

He has so much. So much love. Love that he gives and receives and uses to brighten at least a tiny part of the world around him.

(It’s an unremarkable morning. Somewhat cloudy, with a wind that promises rain later in the day. Azriel wakes up to Cassian nuzzling at his face.

“Good morning,” he says, throat scratchy. Presses a kiss to Azriel’s mouth just because he can.

Azriel smiles up at Cassian. “I love you,” he says, clearing his own throat beforehand.

Cassian’s lying on top of him, the weight warm and familiar. “I love you, too.”

This is his life, most days. Azriel could live in moments like these forever. And he does.)

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW what a ride am i right? again: longest thing i've ever written. damn.
> 
> if you liked it please leave kudos or a comment, it means a lot <3
> 
> hmu on tumblr @bestfluteninja


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